S03E04 - Tripwire

"Tripwire" is the fourth episode of Season 3 of We Can Fix Pawbert. It follows directly on the protective custody fire of "Worth Clawing For", with Pawbert housed in general population and Luther still running his Rook cover inside Zootopia Correctional Facility. Luther pushes for a place in the crew hired to support the conspiracy, while Pawbert, stripped of the notebook he keeps his observations in, goes on watching the facility anyway.

Synopsis

Pawbert Lynxley wakes in general population, four months into the year he has left to serve and without the notebook and photograph he had to leave in the protective custody block. His puma cellmate, whose face he clawed the night before, offers a truce and Pawbert takes it. Elsewhere in the prison, Luther works his undercover identity Rook and lets his cellmate Krazek broker an introduction to Stripes, the tiger who runs A-Block. Stripes gives him a seat at the table. The crew has been paid to support an operation aimed at someone in protective custody, though none of them know who. On kitchen duty, Pawbert watches a weasel courier hand a small metal object to a serval, then sees a corrupt jackal guard escort the serval toward the maintenance corridor, and files it all mentally. Officer Kett raises Pawbert's warnings and his custody status with Warden Knox Ironsnout, a warthog promoted after Warden Hartwell's death, and Ironsnout dismisses both. During yard time, Stripes' crew questions the displaced protective custody inmates. Pawbert recognizes Luther among them, and Luther shoves him to the ground and walks away to protect his cover. Pawbert is harassed on the way back to his cell, cries himself out, and convinces himself the wolf was a stranger. That night Luther follows the weasel into the service corridors and hears Mane, Stripes' lieutenant, confirm the fire was deliberate, communication bypasses are installed, and something sits loaded in the sub-basement. Both lie awake in separate cells.

Plot

Early morning in A-Block, Luther wakes to find his cellmate Krazek already watching him from the upper bunk. The hyena spent the previous night talking at a mammal who never answered, survived it, and reads the silence as permission to keep going. He points out that refusing Stripes in front of the whole mess hall on Luther's first day took nerve and also made him a target, then offers a way to close the distance: approach the tiger as an equal instead of crawling back to him. Luther sees what Krazek is really after, which is to be useful enough to stop being terrorized, and tells him to set up the meeting.

At breakfast Krazek leans in at the center table and comes back with a nod. Luther crosses the mess hall with every eye on him, waits to be invited to sit, and answers the accusation that he made Stripes look bad by arguing that a mammal who refuses orders blindly is worth more than one who folds. Stripes tells him to sit down, and the crew shifts to make room. Over the meal Mane and the two wolves let pieces slip: a party is coming inside a week, it will be loud, and the guest of honor is someone in protective custody. Pressed on it, Stripes says the party belongs to whoever is paying for it, and Mane adds that the target is above their pay grade. They are the muscle and the logistics, paid not to ask. Luther takes it all in without appearing to.

Pawbert wakes into Day 124 with nothing to reach for. The STAY notebook and his mother's photograph are still in the protective custody block, a locked corridor away, so the morning entry he has written every day for four months goes unwritten. Below him the puma stirs, the three claw marks Pawbert put across his face scabbed over and permanent. The puma allows that most protective custody mammals fold and this one did not, then proposes that they stay out of each other's way. Pawbert takes the deal.

On kitchen duty he keeps scrubbing trays and keeps watching. The weasel he reported before the fire is working the room again, and near the loading dock he passes something small and metallic to a serval, a key or close enough to one. At shift change the corrupt jackal guard who once told Pawbert to stop noticing things escorts the serval through a staff-only door and into corridors no inmate is supposed to see. With no notebook, Pawbert files the entry in his head.

Officer Kett carries it up the chain. In the administrative wing he asks Knox Ironsnout to revisit the dismissed report and to restore Pawbert's protective custody status. The warthog was promoted into the job after Warden Hartwell died during the Clawrence extraction, and he is buried in paperwork for a facility he only half understands. He refuses both requests. Pawbert's testimony was useful, he says, which does not make him anything more than a convicted felon inventing conspiracies to feel relevant, and the protective custody block is still being assessed for fire damage, so he will survive a few days. When Kett asks what happens if he does not, the warden answers that Pawbert should have thought about that before betraying his family. Kett leaves knowing the chain of command has closed above him.

During yard time Stripes' crew spreads out through the displaced protective custody inmates, hunting anyone who might know who the party is for. Luther picks Pawbert out first, pressed against the fence and trying not to be seen, and gives nothing away while the crew closes in. Mane names him as the snitch and asks about the party. Pawbert says he knows nothing, because he is not listening. He has found the gray wolf at the edge of the group, the stance and the low ready balance of a mammal with training behind him, and he is staring, begging silently to be recognized. Then he reaches the prison tattoos on the wolf's forearms and cannot match them to the ones he memorized a year earlier in the shower. These claw marks run down the spine instead of the left shoulder blade, and the numbers sit on the wrong side. The wolf gives him nothing back, steps forward, and shoves him to the ground with both paws. The crew laughs, Stripes jeers about Lynxley money, Mane writes him off as useless, and they move on. Luther walks away without looking back.

The walk to his cell is a gauntlet. A hyena shoulder-checks him hard enough to bruise, and a jackal spits on his hindpaw and asks a price for him while others laugh from behind. Pawbert keeps his head down and holds himself together on a repeated denial that the wolf was Luther. Alone on the upper bunk he stops holding. He cries into the pillow until the crying wears itself out, three weeks without Luther and one afternoon in which hope arrived and died, then takes hold of the promise Luther left him with: "Always." The puma returns, reads the state he is in, weighs whether there is anything in it worth using, and lies down without a word.

That evening Luther peels away from the crew and follows the weasel, the same courier he watched handing something to a guard on his first day inside and the thread that runs back to the equipment ZSI seized. The weasel has the guard rotations memorized and steps out of a badger patrol's path without breaking stride; Luther, twenty feet behind, does the same when the guard doubles back. At a service door the weasel knocks a coded rhythm, the serval lets him in with the key, and Luther follows through a door the serval failed to pull shut. Behind a ventilation shaft he finds Mane running a meeting with the weasel, the serval and a boar in maintenance uniform, the four of them moving crates with great care. Bypass nodes are already installed on the A-Block and C-Block communications and the schedule is ahead. The protective custody fire was deliberate, the weasel's own idea, a manufactured emergency to keep attention off the infrastructure, and the assessment keeping the block red-tagged has been bought so the protected inmates stay reachable in general population. Something is loaded in the sub-basement, waiting on a signal. Luther memorizes it for the next dead drop, finds the stairwell the crates went down, and judges a descent that night too risky to attempt.

A split screen holds the two of them a hundred feet apart. Luther lies awake in A-Block, unable to stop seeing the hope on Pawbert's face and the moment it collapsed, telling himself he did it to protect Pawbert and knowing the truer answer is that he is simply good at making his face say nothing. He resolves to do it again as often as keeping Pawbert alive requires. In the other cell Pawbert lies in the same posture, running the list he cannot write down and repeating that the wolf was a stranger until repetition turns it into something he can believe. Neither of them sleeps.

Key Moments

• Krazek brokers Luther's introduction to Stripes, the tiger who runs A-Block
• Luther argues his way to a seat at Stripes' table by refusing to be a mammal who folds
• The crew reveals it has been paid to support an operation targeting someone in protective custody, without knowing who
• Pawbert and the puma cellmate agree a mutual truce the morning after Pawbert clawed his face
• On kitchen duty Pawbert watches the weasel courier pass a small metallic object to a serval, then sees the corrupt jackal guard escort the serval through a staff-only door
• Without his notebook, Pawbert catalogs the day's observations mentally
• Officer Kett asks Warden Ironsnout to revisit Pawbert's report and restore his protective custody status, and is refused on both counts
• Stripes' crew sweeps the yard, questioning the displaced protective custody inmates
• Pawbert recognizes Luther by stance and build, then fails to match the tattoos on the wolf's forearms to the ones he memorized
• Luther shoves Pawbert to the ground in front of the crew and walks away without looking back
• Pawbert is shoulder-checked and spat at on the way back to his cell, then breaks down alone on his bunk
• The puma returns, recognizes what he is looking at, and leaves Pawbert alone
• Luther trails the weasel to a maintenance junction and finds Mane there with the weasel, the serval and a boar
• The protective custody fire is revealed as deliberate arson, set as a distraction while communication bypass nodes were installed in A-Block and C-Block
• The fire assessment keeping the protective custody block closed has been bought, so the protected inmates stay reachable in general population
• Luther finds the sub-basement stairwell and judges a descent that night too risky
• A split screen holds Luther and Pawbert lying awake in separate cells, a hundred feet apart

Key Lines

Characters Introduced

Locations

• Zootopia Correctional Facility:
  • A-Block, including Luther and Krazek's cell
  • Mess hall, where Stripes holds the center table
  • Pawbert's general population cell, shared with the puma
  • Kitchen and loading dock
  • Administrative wing and the warden's office
  • The yard
  • Maintenance corridors, the maintenance junction, and the head of the sub-basement stairwell

Items

• Small metallic object - Possibly a key; passed from the weasel to the serval in the kitchen, and in the serval's paw at the maintenance service door that evening
• Comm bypass nodes - Reported installed on the A-Block and C-Block communication systems
• Crates at the maintenance junction - Handled with the caution volatile cargo gets, then moved down the sub-basement stairwell
• Sub-basement cache - Loaded and waiting for a signal; contents unknown
• STAY notebook - Inaccessible, still in the protective custody cell pending the fire assessment; Pawbert catalogs his observations mentally instead
• Laminated photo - Inaccessible, left beside the notebook
• Badge 1984 - The corrupt jackal guard's badge, carried over from "Licence to Claw"

Notes

• The title references Tripwire (Jack Reacher). All Season 3 episode titles pun on James Bond, Jack Reacher, or Jack Ryan titles.